Work Text:
Then
They met on the seashore, and that always felt fitting because the convergence of land, sky, and sea where waves roll in and out against the horizon as they always do and always will, serving as a bastion of stability in the unpredictable nature of the universe, was how Sora’s friendship with Riku felt.
To Sora, the shore was home. Both in the literal sense as a native island boy and figuratively, like how hot sand between toes was home. Like how clumps of seaweed and shell fragments and plastic detritus worn smooth and colorless by the tide was home. Like how the musky smell of fallen fruits rotting around tree roots was home. Like how his mom’s off-key singing was home, and how his dad deboning fresh-caught fish in the kitchen was home, and how the pretty girl who fell from the stars was home.
Like how his best friend, his shoreline, the adventurous boy with sea-green eyes and audacious dreams, was home.
Sora doesn’t remember exactly when or how he and Riku became friends, but it was long ago, when cheeks were round and arms were thin and the only monsters they had to worry about were the imaginary ones that lurk in the corners of dark closets and the undersides of beds. Sora has no memories of life before Riku, and he figures it’s because they’d always known each other; intrinsically linked from first breaths outside of wombs.
They grew side by side, connected by rhizomes, and though Riku grew bigger and loftier and always took the opportunity to make sure Sora knew it, they had a bond that transcended all others. Sora had many friends, the other island kids they ripened alongside, and even when Kairi came into the fold and made their duo a trio, it was Riku with whom Sora regularly shared oranges and blankets and secrets and promises.
Sitting on the dock alone with Kairi one day, toes barely skimming the tide purling against the barnacles stuck to the piles, she said, “Sora, do you think you and Riku will always be best friends?”
At the time, it seemed like a normal childlike question lacking implication, but later in life, recalling that moment, Sora wonders if it was because she felt a sense of exclusion.
Nonetheless, Sora had answered that question with unbridled confidence and a toothy grin. Of course they would be.
Then the gentle waves of childhood eventually gave way to the rip current of adolescence. Sora and Riku were still best friends, close as ever, but sleepovers became more infrequent and the touches that were once endearing—hugs, handholding, head on shoulder—were now considered embarrassing. It was never a discussion, but after the umpteenth time Riku rebuffed physical affection with a swerve and an awkward laugh, Sora got the hint.
Riku matured faster. Much faster. The one year gap between them started to feel like five, because while Sora still wanted to play make-believe and engrave silly drawings on cave walls, Riku was only interested in competition and pontificating on the banality of island life. Sometimes it felt as though the only commonality was their enjoyment of sparring with plywood swords and fantasizing about grand adventure.
Maybe this was the start; the onset of puberty when body hair thickened and comedones formed and pelvises stirred. It’s easy to say it was later—the days leading up to the fateful night their lives were forever changed—but there was writing on the wall; messy scrawls that grew more erratic by the day that told of Riku’s jealousy and blind ambition.
Sitting on that same dock with Kairi, older now, she said, “You know, Riku’s changed.”
Sora’s inability to notice the shoreline receding wasn’t naivety, it was denial. Riku, like the convergence of land, sky, and sea, was there from the beginning, and Sora wanted to believe he’d be there until the very end, armed with a wooden sword to hit falling meteors back into space.
· - · ♡ · - ·
Riku was thirteen when he awoke one morning in a too-small bed feeling the familiar sensation of warm, bare skin against his torso. High humidity and a quilted blanket meant a layer of sticky sweat had formed between pale chest and freckled back, and after the post-sleep fog cleared, Riku shifted to unstick himself.
There was nothing out of the ordinary with this sleeping arrangement, but he and Sora weren’t little kids anymore, and being nestled against his best friend, half-dressed, felt provocative in a way he didn’t have the words or understanding to explain.
The sudden displacement caused Sora to rouse. He groggily murmured out Riku’s name in a question like a toddler who doesn’t yet understand object permanence. He rolled over to find Riku pressed against the wall, as far from him as he could physically be, but didn’t question it. Instead, he smiled that infectious Sora-smile and said good morning.
In the glow filtering in through the open window, Riku couldn’t help but notice things about Sora he’d never paid mind to before: a smattering of freckles that spanned the bridge of his nose like constellations, the ruddiness of his cheeks from a days-old sunburn, and how his eyes caught the light just right, glittering like the sunlit surface of the sea.
They never had another sleepover after that.
And it took years—two, to be exact—to begin to understand, but understanding only brought more misery. There wasn’t bliss in the ignorance, but at least there was room for denial.
Riku found himself angry a lot. Jealous. Bitter. Possessive. And he began to hate himself for feeling that way, and resent everyone else for not. He knows now that these feelings cast a pitch-black shadow that eclipsed his sensibilities, but, at the time, that darkness he succumbed to drowned out all else, offering him a strange comfort.
It muffled out the world around him, like being submerged in sea water, too deep to see the light of the surface.
· - · ♡ · - ·
Their first reunion after being scattered across the stars was met with many antithetical sentiments, but the tender relief they felt was reciprocal, even if Riku hid it behind the façade of arrogance he’d constructed as a means of self-preservation.
Though Sora had worried about what became of his two best friends after the islands fell, there was at least solace in the fact that, unlike Kairi, Riku was dauntless, sinewy, and capable. Still, after seeing Riku unscathed, looking exactly as he did the night they were separated—cocksure smirk and all—Sora grinned so wide his cheeks hurt and couldn’t stop himself from hooking thumbs into Riku’s mouth to make sure he was really there.
Riku playfully smacked Sora’s hand away, but the childish gesture flooded his chest with fondness. However, as quick as the onset, that fondness soured into a feeling too familiar as of late. The hag had spoken truth: while Riku was off on his own, concerned more for Sora than himself, Sora hadn’t been concerned at all, too preoccupied playing hero with new friends to care about his old ones.
Whereas Sora thought this reunion would mark the real beginning of their adventure together, Riku saw it as an ending. He saw it as a confirmation that the choice Sora had made on the islands—choosing Kairi, choosing someone other than him—wasn’t a misstep or a momentary lapse, it was the choice he’d always make.
The reality was that Riku came second to the pretty girl Sora had known for years, to the talking animals Sora had known for weeks, to the stupid key that turned Sora from simple island boy to valiant hero. Knowing now without a shadow of a doubt that Sora didn’t care about him as much as he cared about Sora was the final push from the precipice wherein the open arms of darkness waited in the chasm below.
When Sora turned around to find the spot where Riku stood empty, it hurt. But Riku was the shore, perpetual even in a shift of tide, so Sora internalized his hurt, grinned through it as taught, and knew they’d meet again.
What he didn’t know was that each subsequent meeting would hurt more than the last, and that this chapter would end with losing Riku again. And again. And again.
That moment in Traverse Town would become one of many that neither of them ever talked about.
· - · ♡ · - ·
It was a promise not forgotten, but integrated at a molecular level to be felt rather than retrieved. It was something too valuable to be reduced to a vignetted anecdote, too intimate to share.
But as Sora was unraveled and peeled away in piecemeal by an intangible force while he climbed higher and higher, the promise hidden like treasure in the depths of his heart was dredged to the surface.
Sora could recall in unmistakable clarity the purple-black sky being lit up by a bombardment of stars. He could recall specifics of that night like it was yesterday and not a decade prior, from the static in the air that made his hair stand on end to the smell of high tide to the bandage barely hanging onto his baby toe. The hand in his was soft and warm, so much so that Sora no longer noticed the splinters digging into his other palm from the hilt of the wooden sword his dad made him.
But despite the unmistakable clarity in which Sora recalled those details, he could not conjure a mental image of the person whose fingers were entwined with his. And what good was remembering a promise made in the wake of falling stars if he could not remember with whom it was shared?
Blonde or silver, blue or green, waif-like or boyish, above him or below. A promise was still a promise, and he intended to keep it.
· - · ♡ · - ·
Working his way up from the bowels of yet another castle, Riku thought often of that fateful night. It sat and metastasized in the back of his mind, malignant, and it haunted him like a shadow cast in the wake of blinding light. Shadows can’t exist without light, after all. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
During this time, Riku kept a journal. He wasn’t a writer, that was more of Kairi’s thing, but blank pages are easier to confide in than people. However, it mattered little when Riku’s attempts to put feelings into words proved fruitless, and none of the sentiments came out right.
Alone—
The darkness—
Sora, I—
The thoughts would forever remain unfinished, with most drowned out by scratches and splotches of black ink that bled through to the other side. In the end, a single page survived. A poem and a promise repeated. Riku folded it up and kept it in the pocket of his coat as he traversed the trail between; the road to redemption, the way to dawn.
· - · ♡ · - ·
Sora remembers drifting.
It felt like floating on his back in the ocean the day after a storm, being gently rocked to sleep by lukewarm waves. When his eyelids grew too heavy, he didn’t fight it. He let himself be pulled under.
In the beginning, there was nothing but nonsensical shapes, unfamiliar voices, never ending hallways, air thick like syrup. But, eventually, the incomprehensible fragments pieced together to form recognizable places; jungles, upside down rooms, deserts, labyrinthian castles. Blurry faces sharpened, silhouettes became friends.
The dreams weren’t dreams at all, they were memories, only this time Sora was on the outside looking in, spectating from the sidelines. Most of the memories were good because Sora was a happy-go-lucky kid who could smile through pain with unwavering hope and valor, reinforced by friendships, both old and new, that made him invincible.
Most of the memories were good, but there were some better left forgotten. The emotions lingered like lesions left to scab, and even suspended in the space between reality and dream, Sora felt the profound sorrow in his chest unfettered.
Reliving the most painful parts of his life was nothing short of torture, but there was a paradoxical bittersweetness to it, because in these memories, there was a silver-lined, silver-haired constant, and Sora would rather see Riku at his worst than not see Riku at all.
It was no coincidence that both his happiest and saddest moments revolved around Riku. It was no coincidence that what gave him strength also served as his greatest weakness.
As Sora watched events unfold with endings he’d already seen, powerless to change the outcome, it was his own actions—or rather, lack thereof—that pained him the most.
What if he had taken Riku’s hand? What if he had found him sooner? What if he had yanked him through the threshold of the door to prevent atonement for wrongs already forgiven? What if he had said those words deemed too embarrassing and childish to say?
The memories and accompanying thoughts fizzled into white noise as the film reel ended. Before everything went quiet and still, a final scene could be made out in the static. A hooded figure in a white room, head bowed, palm pressed against the cloudy glass between them.
Somehow, Sora knew this wasn’t dream nor memory. He fought against fatigue and atrophy and a disjointed sense of identity to mirror the gesture, his hand filling the other with plenty of room to spare.
· - · ♡ · - ·
In the colorless room where a giant, opaque egg-like structure incubated both boy and memory, Riku spent hours—days, weeks, months—with nothing but an idle mechanical hum and anguish as company.
Not in the literal sense, as sometimes there was a faceless man who prattled ad nauseam about hearts and a lack thereof, and a witch who hardly spoke at all. They were allies in that their relationship was symbiotic, but there was no camaraderie. That year was the loneliest year of Riku’s life.
While Sora slept, Riku barely slept at all. Deep sallow pockets settled beneath bloodshot eyes. Hair snarled and matted and tangled from root to tip. The body he’d known continued to grow more unfamiliar—sturdier, longer, sharper—and, outside of combat, he moved gracelessly; hunched with heavy limbs, bumping shoulders and hipbones against doorframes and corners.
While Riku progressively changed, he stood before the chrysalis on many insomnolent nights and wondered if Sora was changing, too. Developing. Metamorphosing. Shedding baby fat and youthful lineaments to emerge more man than boy.
The solitude of the white room afforded Riku much time to think. Sometimes, this was a good thing, but mostly, it wasn’t. Thoughts bordered on obsession. Riku had dedicated himself to keeping his promise by making sure Sora slept peacefully and emerged complete, disregarding morals he’s not sure he ever had to begin with, and yet he couldn’t ignore the compounding dread of a job well done.
Asleep in his crystalline womb, kept like a secret, Sora couldn’t be unforgiving of the destruction and despair left in the wake of Riku’s mistakes. Sora couldn’t reject or condemn or guilt.
But, most importantly, he couldn’t leave. Riku finally had Sora all to himself.
It was selfish, and Riku knew it, but he had always been selfish, hadn’t he?
Pressing his hand to the cool glass, he bent his head and mouthed three words into the silence of the white room. He knew he’d relinquish his hold and disappear when the time came, regardless of how much it would hurt. The universe needed its hero, after all.
Not Riku.
Never Riku.
· - · ♡ · - ·
Sora never stopped caring for Riku, never faulted him. Not during, not after. Even in the midst of cruelty and betrayal, Sora clung to the belief that the Riku he knew was still in there somewhere, lost and waiting to be found.
And it took over a year of chasing, of fighting, of self-sacrificing, of searching, of sleeping, of begging, but Sora did find Riku, and he brought him home and made a promise to himself that he always would, no matter what it took, because home wasn’t home without Riku.
A battle was won, awarding them a moment of respite wherein Sora believed they’d earned their happily ever after. The adventure they recklessly sought was over, and the three of them could return to the halcyon days of perpetual summer and white-tipped waves and the quietude of childhood bedrooms. Sora would never lose his friends—his home—again.
However, the scourge of war lurked in the shadows, and once again they were called to take up arms against threats bigger and greater than themselves. Heroes they’d become through destiny and happenstance and otherwise, they would fight until their last breath. For the universe, of course, but Sora always knew, deep down, it was mostly for his friends.
For Riku.
Always Riku.
· - · ♡ · - ·
A heroic tale turned tragedy. This wasn’t how the story was meant to end, but hope and virtue can’t win a war because real life isn’t a fairytale, and their puerile belief of the contrary was their undoing.
The truth is, sometimes the good guys lose.
In the past two years, Sora had braved through sorrow, stood stalwart against pain, and grinned through heartache because he knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but that fortitude had limits—he was merely a boy, after all—and, for the first time, he saw nothing waiting on the other side. The darkness was endless. Had it always been?
One by one, they fell. The lights of friends—both old and new—were snuffed out in rapid succession. Expended. Ripped from fingertips. Erased. Washed away. Reduced to nothing but a memory.
Falling to his knees, Sora accepted defeat. His armor had cracked, and beneath the shell he was pink and raw like dermis below a blistering sunburn, pained to touch.
They’d lost, and Sora had no hope left to give. He was ready to succumb, to meet his friends on the other side, but though his armor had fractured, there was still a silver bulwark between him and finality.
The pitch black current reeled back into the horizon, roiling and churning into a towering tempest that obfuscated the sun. Knelt in the wake of impending doom, Sora watched the tidal wave crash down and pour forth in a deluge. He took a deep breath and waited for the tide to drag him in to drown, too.
But the tide broke against blade and body as Riku served as a seawall between Sora and the wave, taking the brunt of the torrential onslaught with the foolhardy valor of someone with too much devotion and not enough sense.
Sora may have accepted his fate, but Riku was going to protect Sora with his entire being—what is, what was, what will ever be—even if it meant this sacrifice would be his last.
The universe still needed its hero, after all.
Hot tears streamed down Sora’s face as he choked on the words, feelings, and name he wanted so badly to verbalize.
He watched powerlessly, the link between brain, mouth, and limb severed, as ankles bowed and boots lost traction before him. The few tears he had left wrung out as he squeezed his eyes shut in fear; a residual instinct from childhood that he thought he’d outgrown years ago.
When the deafening cyclone gave way to disconcerting silence, Sora’s eyes fluttered open, only to find the space Riku once stood vacant.
Sora still had his heart, but his chest felt hollow. He was truly alone, now. Without his friends—without Riku—he had nothing left.
However, this grief served as the impetus for Sora to get up off the ground, dust dirt from his abraded knees, and push on. The pity party was over and in its stead was determination unlike any other.
The darkness was eclipsed by a warm familiar light; a blinding star to usher him through the maelstrom, across space and time, to rewrite history. Happily ever afters can’t be hoped, they have to be made.
Trading in his memory of the calamity, of the loss, of the sacrifice, Sora would soldier on as he always did and always would, but this time with bolstered purpose.
Sora wasn’t going to fail this time. He wasn’t going to lose his friends. He wasn’t going to lose Kairi. He wasn’t going to lose Riku.
Not again. Never again.
· - · ♡ · - ·
An entire universe was searched thrice over and nothing was found. No stars to guide, no connections to trace. Not even a strand of chestnut brown hair or a too-big shoe print inlaid in dirt or sand or snow.
Sora was gone, and there was a sense of finality to it that no one wanted to admit out loud, preceded by the realization that sometimes gone means gone for good. Not banished to darkness, not asleep, not lost, not some separation of heart and body, but rather an existence annulled; a bright flame extinguished in the blink of an eye.
Time marched onwards. Worlds spun on their axis. Pieces were gathered in hilt-calloused hands. Life went on despite the loss that weighed heavy in abdominal cavities, as it did and always would. The universe stops for no one.
Time marched onwards, but Riku remained rooted in place, refusing to let his life go on until Sora's life could go on, too. He wasn't going to give up on Sora, just as Sora never gave up on him. He was going to bring him home, no matter what it took, because home wasn’t home without Sora.
It wasn’t denial, it wasn’t childish hope, it was Riku’s way of showing what he never had a chance to say.
It was a gesture of devotion.
It was an act of love.
Now
It’s been nearly two years. One year gone, one year back. Everyone is safe. Everyone is alive. The universe is, more or less, at peace, and yet, Sora doesn’t sleep well.
When he does manage to sleep, there’s a dream that plays on repeat. Or maybe a memory. It’s grainy, monochrome, muted. The reel unspools, the film distorts: skip, rewind, skip, rewind. Static. Fade to black.
He always comes to with the same familiar ache in his chest and gut; a visceral vacuity like his organs have been excavated and strewn across mountains and valleys like tassel for all to see. Because of this, the insomnia is preferential; anodyne.
Sora’s back home, back amid the sand and seaweed and shells and rotten fruits, but this home doesn’t feel like the home he remembers.
Sure, there’s still the same salty breezes and royal palms and cobblestone walkways and weatherworn clapboard houses and familiar faces that smile in greeting, but beyond the shallows, everything is different.
His mom doesn’t sing anymore. His dad traded domesticity for the sea. His old playmates matured, and the little island where their adventures—both imaginary and real—began, is inundant with wood rot and overgrown vegetation.
But what’s changed the most isn’t what lies on the surface of Destiny Islands, it’s the nature of his relationship with his two best friends.
Kairi is overbearing at best, repentant at worst. She hovers fretfully like Sora will disappear, tethering him to the physical world with dainty fingers frequently tangled too firmly in his.
“If only I was stronger…” She laments.
Whereas Kairi heavy-hands her emotions, Riku juxtaposes with incongruous lackadaisicality. Though close in proximity, this façade Riku wears makes him feel further from Sora than ever.
Further than when the islands fell, further than when bifurcated by darkness, further than when they were worlds, realms, even realities apart.
The three of them are together often, like old times, but not really. They chatter idly about the mundane like there’s not much else to talk about; the stifling humidity, clusters of mosquito bites, and what they had for dinner the previous night. Occasionally, Sora and Riku spar with Keyblades while Kairi spectates nearby, but even that feels insipid without the playful jeers, and Riku is deliberately clumsy and halfhearted in his movements as if Sora will disintegrate under the slightest touch.
Sora is full of questions, desperate to fill in the blanks of the preceding year. Through other’s vague recollection of the events leading up to now, Sora can weave together a patchwork narrative but the framework is lacking like they don’t know the full story, either.
All Sora hazily recalls is Riku bringing him home. But home from where, he isn’t quite sure.
There exists only one person who can recount the tale from start to finish, but Riku’s mouth padlocked and what little seeps between teeth is intentionally vague and evasive.
And on the days Riku is within arm’s reach—physically, only physically—the question burns in Sora’s throat like acid.
Why won’t you talk to me?
The tide fell, and then swelled, only for the shoreline to recede far into the horizon behind the sun, unreachable. After everything they’ve been through together and apart, it pains Sora to his core. Losing Riku, figuratively or otherwise, is worse than any nightmare.
There’s an inkling of something indescribable that accompanies the anguish.
Sitting on the trunk of the Paopu tree in silence, Kairi settled between them, Riku’s angular profile is outlined in gold in his peripheral, and the setting sun offers a hint of recognition, a delineation of the fear and pain.
Sora realizes losing Riku is like losing himself.
Though he understands love in the context of loving his family and loving his friends, he recognizes what he feels towards Riku is different, and always has been. It’s a feeling that has gripped him in a chokehold since boyhood, leaving him ordained with ligature markings that never faded and never will.
This love Sora has for his best friend carries alongside it a sense of longing. A look that lingers, a touch that lasts a moment too long. A stirring in the belly, a warmth spread from chest to cheek. A clandestine dream or two or three that leaves in its stead a synthesis of pleasure, confusion, and shame.
Sora lacks personal experience, but not the inherent evolutionary understanding of attraction. However, every depiction of romance has shared one overlapping criteria, for which he and Riku are not applicable. The deviation from the default is what inhibits his ability to line the pieces up.
When the sun finalizes its descent, bruising the zenith of their world purple-blue behind a dusting of stars, the three of them unanimously start towards the trio of boats lining the dilapidated dock below.
During their silent trudge across the footbridge and through the sand, Sora falls several steps behind Kairi and Riku, his thoughts and feelings a house of cards threatening collapse. His two closest friends continue on ahead, arm-lengths apart. When the absence is felt, they turn in unison.
“C’mon, slowpoke!” Kairi piteously taunts, “Last one there is a rotten egg!”
In contrast, Riku says nothing, and his expression says even less.
Sora opens his mouth but promptly closes it. He doesn’t know how to string the feelings into words, or the words into questions, or the questions into answers, so he picks up the pace and falls in step without an explanation.
The dock shudders and creaks under their collective weight. They carefully tread over the rickety wood to their equally rickety boats, where, like usual as of late, their farewells will be in nods and diffidence.
Sora is about to board his boat, but when he looks down he discovers it listing port side with a belly full of seawater. The culprit: a plank that popped a screw. With his dad on an ocean voyage to nowhere, it’s up to Sora to upkeep his decrepit little rowboat, and whereas he’s good with a blade, the same can’t be said for a hammer and nails.
Rocking on his heels, punctuated by creaks, Sora contemplates the feasibility of swimming back to the mainland, spurred by a hardwired need to maintain the status quo wherein he’s the hero who helps others and not the other way around.
This self-imposed burden is why he’s reluctant to express anything contrary to the bright-eyed optimism that’s come to be expected of him. It’s to blame for the martyrdom that he mistakes for selflessness. It’s why he’d rather drown than ask for help.
Oars in hand, Kairi unmoors unaware. Riku is about to do the same, but as he’s unraveling the tight bowline from around the piles, the rocking and syncopated groans of the pier draw his attention. Riku glances over at source of the noise, and Sora meets his gaze only to quickly avert it back to his steadily sinking boat.
Riku follows his line of sight and hums. “You’re not getting anywhere in that.”
If their friendship was what it once was, Sora would’ve hit him with a “Duh” or a “Thanks, captain obvious”, but their friendship isn’t, so Sora says, “Yeah.”
“I’ll give you a ride back to the mainline,” Kairi, now privy to the situation at hand, offers.
“You’re already off the dock. I got it,” Riku says.
Kairi hesitates like she wants to voice disapproval, and Sora wonders if it’s due to overprotectiveness, possessiveness, or an aggregate of the two because they’re not so different, after all. But Kairi quickly folds with a smile. “‘Kay, ‘kay,” she says as she starts rowing towards the dotting of lamplights in the distance.
“Riku, you don’t have to—“ Sora starts, only to be interrupted with, “Why would I not take you home?”
Sora doesn’t know how to answer that question without throwing accusations or throwing up.
Because you won’t tell me what happened. Because you act like nothing happened. Because my chest aches when you’re gone but also when you’re around. Because I miss you and I’m afraid to say it, to show it, because your rejection would shatter my world.
Sora shrugs a single shoulder, instead.
Rather than press, Riku extends a beckoning hand. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Sora crosses the three-plank gap between them, the gesture dazing him with an inundation of memories both happy and sad.
Riku boards first and tries to hold the boat in place as Sora clambers in after. But, despite Riku’s best efforts, the sudden shift of weight causes the boat to yaw and roll beneath Sora’s feet, compromising his already-questionable balance.
Sora stumbles and can’t recover. When he feels his body pitching forward, he preemptively takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut.
However, he remains in place, anchored upright by large hands seizing each hip with calloused fingers pressed into the soft flesh above his pelvic bone.
Prefaced by a throaty chuckle—a sound once familiar—Riku says, “Some things never change, huh?”
Why aren’t you one of them?
“Nice catch.”
Riku smirks but it quickly wanes as he yanks his hands away from Sora’s waist as if burned. He clears his throat and gestures onward. “We should head out before Kairi gets too far.”
There are pins and needles left in the wake of touch, and Sora has to fight back the shiver running up the pedicles of his spine as he settles onto the thwart at the stern, mirroring Riku’s position at the bow. The small boat offers nothing in the way of personal space so knees touch and body heat is communicable.
Riku pushes off from the dock, the muscles in his arms and biceps flexing as he rows. Being face-to-face like this makes Sora dry swallow as his eyes dart around the shore, the sky, the sea. Everywhere but Riku.
Their voyage begins in silence, the salty air heavy with words unspoken and questions unasked. The serenity of the gentle black waves is overwrought with unrest. With nothing to occupy his hands or mind, Sora can’t help but fidget; wringing his fingers, picking at his cuticles, gnawing the insides of his lips and cheeks.
Riku breaks the silence with, “Sora, are you cold?”
“Huh?”
“You’re shaking the whole boat with your jittering.”
“Sorry,” Sora murmurs.
They once again find themselves at a conversational impasse, and Sora doesn’t know if Riku’s to blame, or himself. He idly runs his tongue along a fresh split in his lip, tasting blood. He wants to say something, anything, but can’t.
Just like when the islands fell, just like when the door closed, just like when—
Just like when—
Skip, rewind, skip, rewind. Static. Fade to black.
The memory is there, but out of reach.
After a few moments, Riku stops rowing. “Sora,” he says.
Still refusing to meet his eyes, Sora, matching his tone, says, “Riku.”
“Are you okay?”
Reflexively, Sora tells him, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
But Riku has known Sora for years—forever, even—so he’s unconvinced. “Mhm.”
Sora frowns.
“You can talk to me, you know.”
Sora barks out an incredulous laugh. “Yeah?” Voice rising, he asks, “Can I?”
The anger is warranted but misplaced, because just as Riku won’t talk to him, he won’t talk to Riku, either. It’s a game of chicken that neither of them intend to lose, but instead of a running score or a raft name at stake, it’s themselves and each other and everything in-between.
Riku doesn’t flinch, but his expression hardens. Indignation overriding reticence, Sora meets his eyes at last and in them finds:
Pain.
Sora has known Riku for years—forever, even—and the insight this affords is a two-way street. Even in the dusk, eyes don’t lie.
“I just…” Sora tries, voice barely above a whisper now, “I just…”
“I’m sorry,” Riku says with a bow of his head.
“Ever since—“
“I know.”
“It hasn’t been easy—“
“I know.”
“We’re best friends,” Sora says. “Aren’t we?”
Riku lifts his head but his gaze remains fixed on their adjoining knees. “Of course.”
The question finally surges from chest to throat like bile and burning as such. “Then why?”
That single why encompasses many whys, and Sora is leaving it up to Riku to choose which to address first.
“Because I’m stupid.” A blanket response that could apply to any or all of the above. Riku meets Sora’s gaze and they maintain eye contact longer than they have in days, weeks, months.
Taking the non-answer at face value, Sora says, “I just want things to go back to how they were. Back to normal. I’m sick of this, all of this.” He vaguely gesticulates towards the shore, the sky, the sea. Everywhere but Riku.
“Things can’t go back to how they were, Sora. It’s not that easy.”
“It is,” Sora argues. “Nothing has changed—“
“So much has changed.”
“Not me!”
“Then maybe I have.”
“What does that even mean, Riku?”
Sora can hear each erratic thump of his heart in his ears, his adrenal glands in overdrive in response to the confrontation he has both craved and feared for far too long.
“Look, Sora…” Riku begins, but he stops himself with a shake of his head. Instead of finishing his thought, he poses the question: “Do you remember what I said? Before we came home?”
Sora wracks his brain, searching within himself for memories of events he isn’t sure are there or were ever there to begin with. His mind has been pulled around like putty these past few years; undone and restored ad nauseam to the point where his hippocampus has been worn threadbare.
Nothing has angered him more.
Gleaning that it, along with everything else, remains forgotten, Riku says, “I told you, uh…” He tilts his head back to stare up at the sky and utters, “…um, how much you mean to me.”
Sora’s heart beats faster, faster, faster. “Oh.” Trying to keep his voice from wavering, he says, “That—that’s sweet.”
Riku’s Adam’s apple bobs. His jaw flexes. His hands tighten around the handles of the oars. “I can be sweet,” he lamely says.
“You can also be a jerk.”
Instead of denying it, Riku harrumphs.
Another stretch of silence, and then a trepid, “You mean a lot to me too, Riku. You always have.”
In the light afforded by the emerging moon, Sora notices dimpling at the corner of Riku’s mouth, and there’s something captivating about seeing him in the moonlight; the shimmering of hair, the glow of pale skin, the contour of a jawline already flawless. Like this, Riku reminds him of a statue, carefully carved from Parian marble during a bygone era.
This idle thought provokes another: if the person before him were anyone else, would he be as enthralled? Would he also find them akin to fine art? Would he have noticed them at all?
Riku goes from looking at the sky to looking at Sora. In dilated pupils, Sora sees a reflection of constellations and loses his train of thought.
“We’ve been sitting here long enough,” Riku suddenly says, marking the end of their brief moment of sincerity. He looks over his shoulder towards the mainland. “Kairi probably made it back already. She’s probably worried about us.” He pauses and amends, “About you.”
Sora doesn’t catch the implication so he doesn’t question the correction. “We’re together. She knows we’re okay.”
“You usually walk her home, though, don’t you?”
More accurately, Kairi walks him home.
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“The prince shouldn’t leave the princess waiting, Sora,” Riku teases. He smiles, but it bears no resemblance to the one he wore just moments ago.
Sora scrunches his brow. “What prince?”
“All I’m saying,” Riku continues without acknowledging the question, “Is that I know you two are usually joined at the hip. Or hand. Whatever.”
If Sora wasn’t too preoccupied trying to discern the meaning of such a statement, he’d notice the twinge of acerbity in Riku’s tone. “She cares is all,” Sora dismisses with a shrug. “I was gone for a year, you know.”
Riku narrows his eyes, obscuring the stars. “You’re missing the point.”
“Then just say it, man!” Sora’s shout carries with the breeze and sea foam.
Matching his volume and rigid posture, Riku tells him, “I just figured you’d rather be anywhere than here on this goddamned boat with me!”
Sora winces before posing a similar question to the one Riku asked him earlier. “Why would I not want to be here?”
Riku’s broad chest steadily rises and falls with each breath as he searches for something in Sora’s expression. Sora searches Riku’s expression, too, unsure what he’s looking for, if anything at all.
“Paopu fruit,” Riku flatly says.
“I wouldn’t want to be here because of Paopu fruit?”
“Yes— I mean, no— I mean….” Riku takes a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. “The legend, you know?”
Of course, Sora knows. The legend of the Paopu fruit is tantamount to the Destiny Islands culture; folklore so ingrained that he begins reciting on autopilot, “If two people share one—”
“Their destinies become intertwined,” Riku finishes.
It’s a romantic idea, though not inherently romantic in nature. However, the prevalence of the practice being used romantically rather than platonically skews the connotation.
When they were younger, both he and Riku partook in an unspoken rivalry that befalls many adolescent boys. It was a seed sown by hormones and cultivated by comments from peers and adults both; whom believed a friendship between two teenage boys and a girl was doomed to devolve into warfare.
Sora didn’t quite understand but participated nonetheless, egged on by Riku who was the one who introduced the idea of sharing a Paopu fruit with Kairi to begin with.
Grasping for the relevance of Paopu fruit in present context, Sora veers towards a suggestion in line with societal norms, and the mere thought of Riku having feelings for their mutual friend causes a sharp pang beneath his ribs that reverberates throughout his whole body.
“Hey, man…” Sora trails off.
Deep down, he knows it doesn’t make sense. Riku, even back then, never expressed any romantic inclination towards Kairi, or anyone for that matter, despite the copious amount of female attention he regularly received. Their assembly line love-triangle started and ended with impish goading and various wagers, never leading to anything even in victory.
Yet, the ache persists.
Riku watches and waits expectantly for Sora to finish his thought.
“Is this about Kairi?” He forces out in a single breath.
Riku hesitates like he doesn’t know the answer to that question. “It’s about you, mostly,” he says.
“Riku, please!”
“What?”
“Stop speaking in stupid riddles and metaphors! Stop being so damn vague!”
Sora’s tightly clenched fists stamp bright pink crescent-shaped imprints on his palms. The swell of emotion that has sat and percolated over the past several days, weeks, months can no longer be quelled.
“Know what I think, Riku? I think you’re the one who’d rather be anywhere than on this goddamned boat with me!”
“That’s…” Riku’s voice goes small. “That’s not true.”
Sora slumps forward, expended. Throat worn raw and ragged, he asks, “Then, what is?”
When Riku doesn’t respond, Sora lifts his head. Since they were small, Riku has always exuded confidence. He walked around chest-first and spoke with charm and authority. But that confidence has all but evaporated, leaving in its stead palpable self-doubt.
Watching Riku dither, Sora is torn between exasperation and concern.
Finally, Riku answers, “That you’re my best friend in the world. Every world. Every universe. Every reality.”
The finality of Riku’s words has Sora anticipating a rug-pull; some sort of nevertheless that will shatter his heart into a million crystalline pieces. The thought alone causes a spiderweb of hairline cracks to creep from the epicenter.
When nothing follows, Sora waveringly prompts: “But…”
“But…” Riku echoes. The fractures in the fault line deepen. “But, it’s difficult. For me. Because I… I feel things I shouldn’t feel.”
Sora feels the corners of his eyes sting and refuses to blink. “Like what?”
“How you feel towards Kairi, you know?” Riku tilts his head forward to hide behind a curtain of bangs as if ashamed.
“How I feel… Towards Kairi?” Sora frowns. “She’s my best friend, like you are.”
What he fails to mention is, with Riku, it’s different, but he can’t articulate what he, himself, barely understands.
“You know what I mean, Sora.”
“Look Riku, if you like her—“
“Princes and princesses,” Riku interjects. “It’s how the stories always end.”
“And… You’re the prince?”
Riku shakes his head and looks up enough for Sora to see a flash of a smirk. “You’re the one with the crown.”
Sora instinctively reaches for his chain. The warmth of the metal is comforting in his palm. He curls his fingers around its pendant, lacing them through the divots, and it thrums in harmony with his heartbeat.
Riku continues, “And since Kairi is a princess…”
Sora may be inexperienced when it comes to the intricacies of romance, but he’s not clueless. “Kairi is my friend,” Sora reiterates. “Princess or not.”
Sora had considered his feelings towards Kairi in the past, spurred by all the implicative teasing and expectation, and he quickly came to the conclusion that what he feels towards Kairi isn’t like how, say, Aladdin feels towards Jasmine, or how Beast feels towards Belle.
There’s no strict set of guidelines that delineates platonic love and romantic love. There’s no criteria or checkboxes or diagrams. But, the love he’s observed between some of his otherworldly friends share common threads:
There’s devotion like no other; a willingness to do anything and everything to keep the other person safe. And there’s attachment; a visceral need to be by that person’s side and a sense of anguish when not. And there’s desire; a craving to touch and be touched. To hold and be held. To cherish in every sense of the word and be cherished in return.
Thoughts hark back to warm hands, but they leave quick as they came, replaced by muddled sentiments bordering on overprotective or possessive or an aggregate of the two because they’re not so different, after all.
But there’s no time for introspection. If there was, Sora would recognize that his understanding of romantic love isn’t conjectural, and that the sickening churn of his belly, chest, and thoughts is correlative.
Desperate to be rid of the dread, Sora forces out, “I think you should go for it.”
After a pause, Riku carefully asks, “Go for what?”
“You know,” Sora says. He clears his throat to keep his voice from cracking. “You should act on those feelings you have.”
Riku blinks in rapid succession. His expression shifts from disbelief to delight to doubt at a similar pace. “I’m… not sure that we’re on the same page,” he says.
“I’m on the last page. The happily ever after page.”
Riku gives a firm, “Sora.”
“Yeah?”
“You want me to go for it? Okay, close your eyes.”
Sora is confused, but obeys nonetheless. He waits expectantly as the boat shifts, and then—
The unmistakable heat of breath. A dry swallow. A clammy hand on his knee.
Sora is about to demand an answer to this riddle, but before he can open his mouth, his lips are enveloped by a light, trembling warmth that ignites sparks behind his eyelids and throughout his bloodstream.
And then it’s over. Sora’s eyes flutter open as he reaches for his tingling lips. Mere centimeters from his face is Riku’s own, and up close, Sora can see every pore and every follicle meticulously chiseled into marble.
A kiss. His first. The fire in his veins burns his cheeks red as it continues to ravage his insides.
Riku clears his throat as he leans away. “Do you get it now?”
The love Sora has for Riku is different and always has been, but he’s never been able to expound how or why. Attraction can be conflated with admiration. Jealousy can be chalked up to an innate tendency to cling. Dependence can be attributed to an anxiety borne of past events. Fleeting thoughts and hazy dreams can be written off as embarrassing lapses brought on by an overactive imagination and endocrine system.
Like Riku said: princes and princesses. That’s how the stories always end.
At a loss for both words and acuity, Sora can only manage to say, “You kissed me.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
The answer is obvious, but fragility and self-doubt suppress conclusion.
“Everything I do,” Riku quietly says, “Everything I’ve done. It all comes back to you. You’re my most precious person, Sora. You’re what matters.”
“I…”
And there it was, a succinct summation of the clutter of thoughts and feelings that surround their bond. Hair-splitting on what does and doesn’t constitute as romantic love is superfluous when broken down into a simple designation:
Your most precious person.
Sora knows, indubitably, that Riku is his most precious person, too. His shoreline—the convergence of land, sky, and sea—perpetual even in a shift of tide.
“I…” Sora continues to falter, but this time, he isn’t going to let the words get caught in his throat. “I liked it. A lot. The kiss, I mean.”
Riku’s stare, though unyielding, is oddly encouraging.
“And,” Sora says, “You’re my most precious person, too, Riku. You’re my home, no matter who or what or where we are. And I’m…”
The pain of a loss forgotten echoes throughout his thoracic cavity.
He whispers, “I’m so scared of losing you.”
Again. And again. And again.
Riku mirthlessly chuckles. “I know the feeling.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve always been afraid of living a life you’re not apart of, Sora. And I’ll do anything and everything to keep you here, regardless of consequence.” Riku gently grabs Sora’s hand, turning it supine so he can trace along palm lines—heart to sun to life to fate—all the way up to Sora’s quickening radial pulse. “I’m selfish,” he admits.
“You’re not—” Sora tries, but Riku shakes his head.
“Sora, I’m in love with you. I often wish I wasn’t, and I’ve tried to internalize it, but my heart is tethered to yours beyond the point of reservation. It’s led me to the darkest of places, it’s led me to the brightest of lights, it’s led me to the lonely expanse between. Everything—and I mean everything—begins and ends with you.”
After a brief recess, Sora asks Riku, “Why me?”
Riku laughs. This time it’s genuine and it rings like a melody in Sora’s ears. “God, where do I even start?” He muses for a moment and says, “You’re you. That’s all it takes.”
Sora’s own musing leads to the conclusion that his adoration for Riku similarly lacks particulars, encompassing every inch of his entirety; what is, what was, what will ever be.
“Riku, I love you,” he blurts, emotions brimming to the cusp, full to bursting. ”I’ve always loved you. I didn’t understand before, but now I do.”
“Understand what?”
“Like, why my heart beats so fast when you’re around, and aches when you’re not.”Sora leans closer. “And why you’re the subject of so many of my thoughts, so many of my dreams.” Closer. “And why I look at you like you’re a beautiful work of art, and no one else.” Even closer. “And why that kiss felt so good, like heaven.” Nearly nose-to-nose, Sora softly says, “And why I want to do it again and again and again.”
Riku directs the same question in a breathy murmur, “Why me?”
And Sora gives the same answer. “You’re you, that’s all it takes.”
With that, he closes what little gap remains, pressing his lips to Riku’s with desperate urgency, as if he’ll soon slip away like sand through fingertips.
Whereas their first kiss was chaste and cautious, this one is anything but; an undulation of heads and mouths, an ebb and flow of lips and breath.
Sora may have initiated, but it’s Riku leading while he follows. With no point of reference, he resorts to mimicking Riku’s movements. When an inhale serves as open invitation, Riku’s warm tongue runs along his bottom lip, over the coppery split, before diving in to taste every inch of his mouth. Keeping in step, Sora responds in kind.
He doesn’t know if he’s doing it right, but Riku’s hums are indicative of satisfaction, and the gasps erupting from his own throat without warning are endorsement.
The hand that was resting on his wrist is now cradling the side of his face. The hand that was on his knee is now tangled in the roots of his hair. Sora grips Riku’s shirt with pallid knuckles, unwilling to ever let him go. Not again, never again.
They break apart with wide eyes and heaving chests. Riku’s bewilderment is first to taper into half-lidded adoration. “I’ve dreamed of this moment,” he admits.
“Me too. I just didn’t know it.”
In a final bid for assurance, Riku asks, “You sure about this, Sora? Think about it for a moment.”
But Sora doesn’t need a moment to think about it. His heart did all the thinking already. With a beaming grin, Sora tells him, “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life.”
In lieu of further discussion on the matter, they affectionately stare into each other’s eyes. The constellations are back, refracting off glassy pupils, and the sky has never looked so beautiful.
Eye-contact breaks when something behind Sora catches Riku’s attention. “Look, a shooting star,” he says, and the childlike wonder in his voice and expression evokes nostalgia.
Sora twists around in time to see a streak of light flit across the night sky before disintegrating into the atmosphere. “Oh! Riku! Make a wish!”
“I don’t need—“ Riku is interrupted by another shooting star. And then another. And another. Ephemeral trains of light cut through the dusk in increment, burning bright and fast. They both watch in awe.
A meteor shower. It’s been over a decade since stars fell on the Destiny Islands, and a misplaced memory surges to the forefront: entwined fingers, wooden swords, and a promise. Unlike many of Sora’s memories as of late, this one is clear.
“What if a shooting star hits the islands?”
“If a shooting star comes this way, I will protect you.”
“Do you remember—“ Sora starts, but Riku interjects, “Of course. I made a promise to always keep you safe.”
And it’s a promise singularly made but mutually kept. Between sacrifice and relentless determination and everything in-between, they’ve always found each other, and they’ve always returned home together, no matter what it took, because home isn’t home otherwise.
“I could never forget,” Riku says, “You wear that promise around your neck, after all.”
Sora’s crown; a symbol of his anointment into princehood by alloy, as adjunctive to his beingness as his own arms and legs. From the moment the chain was mantled around his neck, it’s rarely left its berth. Like his friendship with Riku, it felt as though it’d always been there, inlaid from onset.
Though marred by hypertrophic scars—residuum of the abuse his memory sustained—Sora’s recollection of the night of the meteor shower reveals the truth at last; when Riku called him a prince, it was because he himself had crowned him as such over a decade ago.
The necklace is not solely a keepsake most sentimental. It’s a sterling vow. Even when apart—physically or otherwise—Riku is always with him, secured against his breastbone ad infinitum, serving as a bastion of strength and courage, even when Sora couldn’t extrapolate how or why.
But there’s a pressing matter at hand; a question that’s been sitting on Sora’s tongue since the second kiss. “So… What happens now?”
Mutual love is established, but Sora doesn’t know what comes next. For the others—the couples that follow convention—it leads to relationships. Marriage. Families. But for two people who subvert those conventions, what’s the protocol? Are they an outlier, or are they flawed?
“Well, what do you want to happen?” Riku softly asks.
Sora contemplates, but not for long. His wants—his needs—can be summed up by one simple request.
“I want to never be apart,” he resolutely states. But that confidence promptly dissipates and he meekly follows with, “And… That’s okay, right? Even though we’re— Even if I— Whether or not it’s—“ Frustrated by his inability to eloquate his concerns, he splutters out, “Princes and princesses.”
Riku’s quirked brows stoop to a furrow. “Just because it’s different,” he says, “Doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
“But you said that’s how the stories always end.”
“Then, I guess we’ll have to write our own, won’t we?“
After all, happily ever afters can’t be hoped, they have to be made.
Sora nods, though the hesitance remains. He can’t help but worry about what their friends will think, and his fear of rejection, while centralized, extends beyond Riku.
As if reading his mind, Riku once again cradles his face and assures him, “It’ll be fine. I promise.”
And Riku has proven true to his word again and again. In spite of his deep-seated desire to be well-liked, Sora knows he has no reason to suspect otherwise. He visibly relaxes and accepts it doesn’t have to matter, and it shouldn’t. He knows in his heart of hearts that this feeling—this love—is irrevocable; as unyielding as the sky, the sea, the shore.
“So, what do you say?” Riku asks when Sora doesn’t respond.
The vacuity in Sora’s chest has been sated. The ache of losses both remembered and forgotten has ebbed. The frustration fettered, the anger waned. For the first time in days, weeks, months, his bright-eyed optimism isn’t a façade. He finally reached the light at the end of tunnel.
The stories diverge, but, in the end, they will meet at the same point. The same last page, the same happily ever after.
“Let’s make another promise,” Sora suddenly says. “Let’s promise to never be apart again.”
Riku smiles so wide his eyes squint and glaze over. The utmost adoration in his expression is only matched by Sora’s own. “Okay. I promise,” he says.
“I promise, too.”
And together, they bob along the ocean beneath the moon and stars, guided home by the placid pull of the tide. When they reach the shore, they tread the cobblestone walkway past the royal palms and weatherworn clapboard houses, casting glances and smiles at one another under the warm glow of street lamps. Along the way, Sora takes Riku’s hand in his, filling it with plenty of room to spare.
They’re not the boys they used to be, but they don’t have to be. They’re together, and hand-in-hand, they will create a better, brighter future; for their families, for their friends, for each other, and above all, for themselves. And that’s what matters.
That night, back against bare chest, Sora’s fears melt away, and he sleeps the best he ever has.